Access the BBC Timewatch series video, The Mystery of the Headless Romans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rhLlzmUTkc&t=174).

This activity will show you the difference between learning history from a book, and actually being a historian. The study of history depends on forensics, a bit like the crime labs you see on television, because true historians don’t retell neatly written stories—they solve mysteries. Historians must use a variety of approaches and get input from a variety of experts to make sense of the past. This lesson illustrates the importance of using an interdisciplinary approach to solve a complex question, a process that’s very important in the Big History course.

Interdisciplinarity, Reading
This is the first time (of many!) in this course that you will be exposed to the idea of thinking across disciplines and seeing how different people and perspectives are all vital to making sense of the past. Additionally, you’ll watch a video as part of this activity. In Big History, we approach video watching in the same we approach reading. Think about the differences between passive and active viewing as you watch this first video of the course.

You’re going to think about how to solve the Mystery at York. Your clues: In 2004, 30 decapitated human skeletons, all male, were discovered in York, England. Scientists determined that the bones were from the third century CE. The heads of the decapitated bodies had been placed around the knees and feet. Eventually, about 80 male skeletons were unearthed. You’re going to think about the clues you’ve just been given, and then watch an excerpt from a video to see how researchers from different disciplines contributed to the development of a hypothesis for why these men were there, and why they were buried in the way that they were.

Respond to the first question on the worksheet. Your teacher will follow up with class discussion.

Watch a 15-minute excerpt from the video, The Mystery of the Headless Romans (2:51 to 18:55). Here are some questions to think about along the way.

1. Why did the Romans build Eboracum, now known as York?
2. What did archaeologist Patrick Ottaway say was so unusual about the skeletons that they were finding?
3. What other unusual things were discovered during this dig?
4. How did the human bone specialists figure out that this person died from one decisive blow?
5. What were some of the hypotheses given about what may have happened in that burial site?
6. Why might have the Romans decapitated their dead?
7. Why does it seem like this burial doesn’t mimic the usual burial rite practices by Romans from this time period?
8. Why is Janet Montgomery, an archaeological scientist, going to carry out a series of tests on the teeth of six skeletons?
9. What can be learned from the teeth enamel?
10. What was learned from the tests on the teeth in relation to where the skeletons were from?

After a class discussion about the video, respond to the second question on the worksheet.

If you found the excerpt from The Mystery of the Headless Romans interesting, that’s nothing compared to the ending where all the evidence comes together like a murder mystery. Feel free to watch the rest of it on your own sometime.

Read the short essay, “What Will We Leave Behind?.” Be prepared to join a class discussion and share your ideas.

Complete the third question on the worksheet.

Good critical thinkers need to be able to look at things from multiple perspectives. In this activity you’ll look at a single event—the collapse of the population on an island—from different points of view. You should know right off the bat that the true reason for the collapse remains a total mystery! That said, lots of historians and scientists have hypotheses about why this island’s population fell so drastically. You’re going to try to make sense of what happened there, and you’ll do this using multiple perspectives, or as some may say, and interdisciplinary approach.

Interdisciplinarity
This activity may be the first time you encounter the idea of using multiple disciplines—rather than only history—to help make sense of the past. This is a great place to discuss how differing viewpoints can help us change or refine our perspective on events.

Look at the picture of Easter Island your teacher has displayed. In 1722, explorers happened upon this island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When they arrived, they discovered more than 800 giant statues and almost no people. This was strange, since the small number of people on the island couldn’t possibly have built these statues—it would have taken a much larger civilization. Think about Easter Island and consider the following questions: What kinds of events might have befallen the people of Easter Island?

Take out the Easter Island Mystery Worksheet and the article, “What Happened on Easter Island?” and look carefully at the images and charts included in the article. Ignore the text for now. You are going to see what information you can gather before you even start to read. It may not seem like these images and charts provide a lot of information, but if you put them together, you can make some informed guesses about this place. Working in groups, answer the following questions on the worksheet (be prepared to share your answers with the class):

1. Describe what pattern the population graph shows for this time period.
2. Brainstorm as many explanations as you can that would explain this pattern. 

Now, read the text of “What Happened on Easter Island?” In a group, complete the table on the Easter Island Mystery Worksheet and be prepared to share your answers with the class. Did the article change your perspective on what happened?

Vocabulary has to be more than just a list of words to memorize and groan about. These words represent big (and sometimes medium-sized) concepts critical to the unit. And, it turns out, just memorizing the definition doesn’t necessarily help you understand what a word means. To really get the meaning of each word, you need to see it in a variety of contexts. In this unit, as in each unit in the course, there are three types of vocab activities. Early in the unit, there’s a word wall (such as the one here), which will help you become familiar with the words for each unit. Later in each unit, there’s a second activity that’s a deeper exploration of some of those words. In this unit, for example, that second activity is live concept mapping. Finally, every unit includes a vocab tracking activity, where you can keep a personalized list of words that are new to you.

Reading, writing
This activity is focused on helping you learn course vocabulary, which is partly a way to ensure you’re able to fully engage with the BHP course content. This is especially true for the readings in the course—if you don’t understand the words you’re reading, you won’t be able to glean the main ideas of texts, and therefore may miss out on important aspects of your learning. Additionally, as you build up your vocabulary, you will become an even better writer.

In this activity, you’ll work with your class to create a word wall using the Unit 1 vocabulary. You’re going to do this throughout the unit by adding one word at a time, so you don’t get overwhelmed with a big list of new words all at once!

Your teacher will assign a vocab card to each of you. Once you get yours, pretend that you have the MOST important word to help you understand Unit 1, and prepare to argue why that is. Look at your vocab word and take a few minutes to look it up in the Unit 1 Vocab Guide and then examine the unit itself (click around and quickly skim the content) to see where in the unit your word might be most applicable. Once you’ve done your research, get ready to argue for why your word is the “best” one to start with. After everyone has given a pitch on their word, you’ll all decide which word should make it onto the wall first.

Your teacher may add some fun twists to this assignment, so be sure to listen closely for directions!

Why should we study the history of the Universe? How is the Universe really connected to human history? What do scale switching, thresholds of increasing complexity, and claim testers mean? And why am I studying science in my history class? These are all important questions, and Rachel Hansen, our guide through the Big History course, has all (well, most) of the answers!

This video introduces you Big History and the 13.8-billion-year history of the Universe you’ll encounter in this course. Overview videos provide you with a preview of what’s to come in the unit. And, as you move through the course, these videos will also help remind you of the main concepts in the unit you’ve just finished. But, most importantly, these videos will help you understand the connections between history and other disciplines like astrophysics, biology, and chemistry and the ways in which our understanding of each has changed over time. If we’re going to journey through 13.8 billion years of history then we’re going to need some help from lots of experts to understand how our Universe works and how we fit into all that history.

Preview

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Factual

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. What is the purpose of an origin story?
2. What are thresholds of increasing complexity?
3. How does learning about the scientific principles of our Universe fit into a history class?
4. What is scale switching?
5. What are the claim testers and why are they important in this course?
6. Why should we study more than just “recorded history”—all the stuff that came after writing was invented?

Thinking Conceptually

1. Why is it important to learn about different narratives of history instead of focusing on one single narrative or one person’s or one nation’s historical perspective? What does Rachel say in this video to support your point of view?

Big History is a unique history course because it strives to tell the history of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present, rather than focus on some smaller chunk of the story, as history courses have typically done. Because Big History answers questions about how the Universe began and the place of humans in that Universe, it is considered a modern, scientific origin story.

Where did the idea for this new way of teaching history come from? This video will give you context for Big History and a solid understanding of the thinking behind the development of the course. You’ll be introduced to David Christian, the course creator, who talks about how he came up with the idea of Big History. You’ll see David Christian throughout the course and he’ll play a big part in guiding you through your Big History journey (in other words, he’s a pretty important dude, so get familiar with him!). The video also brings up many of the key ideas in the course, and feels a bit like a ”coming attraction” to what you’ll be learning throughout the course.

Preview

Big History is a course that’s probably different from other history courses you’ve taken. It covers a much bigger chunk of history than other history courses – all of it, in fact! It uses information from many academic disciplines – physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, and anthropology – to tell its story. Big History focuses on how the Universe has become more complex over time. 

Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch the video:

1. David Christian emphasizes the importance of questions in the course. What are some of the questions he identifies?
2. What is Big History?
3. What kinds of questions did David Christian ask as a result of his thinking about the teaching of one country’s history? How did these questions lead him back to the origins of the Universe?
4. What are origin stories?
5. What is Big History? (Yes, this is a repeat of the second question. David Christian defines Big History twice in the video – that’s how important it is!)
6. What are “thresholds of increasing complexity”?

Thinking Conceptually

In the video, Christian talks about how the modern day origin story isn’t perfect. We keep learning new information about the world, and as a result, we have to keep adjusting what we know, and we have to adjust our stories, as well. So, things that we think to be true today may no longer be true after new evidence comes along. For example, even though Christian says in the video that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, recent discoveries have led scientists to believe that the Universe is actually 13.8 billion years old. (A minor detail, you think? The difference—one tenth of a billion—is a very large number. If you have a spare minute, figure out just how large.) Does knowing this—that even our modern day origin story is always evolving—change your thinking about how history works and how we understand the past?

The Big Bang is a good start date for studying history because it’s when the history of the Universe actually happened. In Big History, we use different time and space scales to help us understand the story of the Universe. We also use the knowledge from different disciplines to help us understand this story.

Crash Course Big History Episode #1. Crash Course is a video series (check them out on YouTube) that provides a way to learn about many different topics in a way that is definitely not business as usual. In Crash Course Big History, you’re given a great overview of almost every unit in the course (this video covers Units 1 and 2, so we STRONGLY suggest you watch it twice – now and again in Unit 2). This video gives you another take on the Big History course and also previews what’s to come.

Preview

This video explains why and how it can be important to look at the history of the Universe, from the Big Bang until now, instead of just picking out a segment of history. An explanation of scale, the Big Bang, and the first few minutes following the Big Bang are all included here.

Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch the video:

1. Why is the Big Bang a good start date for history?
2. What do different scales give you?
3. How old is the Universe?
4. How do we know that the Big Bang is the beginning?
5. What are the two simplest elements that were formed after the Big Bang?
6. What is cosmic background radiation (CBR)?
7. What is redshift?

Thinking Conceptually

Compare and contrast the scale of Big History to other history courses. How is what we learn the same, and how is it different?

To get the most out of this course, you need to be able to find things easily on the Big History website.

Use the Big History Website Scavenger Hunt Worksheet and respond to all of the questions.

At this point, you should be getting a good sense of what Big History is about, how the most important moments are defined, and what’s to come (hint: LOTS!).

Clip 0:00 - 8:20. This is yet another introduction to Big History. Yes, this is the third one—and the last of these intro videos. This may feel like overkill, but Big History is really very hard to grasp. By repeating some of the same information, but in different ways, this video gives you another opportunity to get a handle on what Big History is all about.

Preview

This video, created in partnership with the History Channel 2 (H2), is sort of a “Hollywood” introduction to Big History.

Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch the video:

1. What is so important about the placement of the Earth in relationship to the Sun?
2. Why is the Moon so important to our Earth?
3. What does Jupiter’s location do for the safety of the Earth?
4. What kind of timeline does Big History follow? In other words, how is Big History’s timeline different from the ones we usually see that are just a straight line?
5. What is a threshold moment?

Thinking Conceptually

In the first 30 seconds of this video, Bryan Cranston (the narrator) says that Big History is the “story of how we almost didn’t happen”—what does he mean by this?

Investigation 0 Prompt: To what extent has the Modern Revolution been a positive or negative force?

This Investigation serves as the baseline writing assessment for the course. With this baseline, you’ll be able to get a sense of your initial skills in comprehending a range of texts and using evidence to support your ideas. You’ll repeat this same Investigation in Unit 9 to measure your growth throughout the school year. You’ll likely be impressed with how much you’ve learned and how your writing skills have developed in just one year! This assessment also introduces you to the Investigation-style writing you’ll be doing as assessments at the end of each unit.

Day 1
In this activity, you’re going to respond to a question using texts to support your thinking in the form of an Investigation. All BHP Investigations give you a question along with several source documents, and you’ll use the information in those documents (and perhaps additional knowledge) to respond to the question. Your response will be written in essay format and will be five- to six- paragraphs long. You may not be familiar with the content, and this may be the first time you tackle this kind of reading and writing task—and that’s OK! The goal of this particular Investigation is to understand where you’re starting from so it’s possible to measure the growth you make over the course of the year. This Investigation asks you to respond to the question, To what extent has the Modern Revolution been a positive or a negative force?

First, your teacher will ask you to write down your conjectures—or your best guesses made without lots of evidence—about whether the Modern Revolution has been a positive or negative force. This is not a yes or no question. Think about whether the Modern Revolution—which has made our world more complex and interesting, as well as more fragile and dangerous—has led to positive or negative changes. In what ways have our networks expanded? This expansion might be related to developments in technology, communication, or resources. Does expansion always lead to good results?

You’ll have about 5 to 10 minutes to make notes and think about whether the Modern Revolution has had a good or bad impact.

Next, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Investigation 0 Document Library. As you review each document, you’ll use the graphic organizer to record the major claims in the texts and decide how you might use each text to support your claim.

Day 2
Now it’s time to write! You’ll develop a five- to six-paragraph essay arguing whether the Modern Revolution has been a positive or negative force. Remember to use information from the Investigation 0 Document Library along with BHP concepts and other information you’ve learned in this unit as evidence to support your argument or opposing point of view. It’s also important that you cite the sources you use as evidence in your essay.